Rid of Me
by littlebirds
Summary: Hermione gets the cat, the flat, the food, and the furniture. Ron gets the family and friends. Harry gets the boot, his little book, the blame, and the shame. Ginny gets a new bloke and a haircut. New circumstances mix with old patterns, and Harry and Hermione find their friendship is suddenly put to the test.
1. Before:or Prologue, Part 1

A/N- This story employs a non-linear structure know as the "O", where we start with the crisis point of the story and then drop into flashback. Just wanted to let you know what to expect.

* * *

**Standard Disclaimer applies. Thanks.**

* * *

**Hermione**

By the time the package arrived, his side of the bed had risen back to its original shape. The Horlicks he left had gone rock hard in the jar, and the smell of his soap had disappeared from the bathroom drains. The advert had promised 'Delivery in four to six weeks', but by my calculations, it had taken closer to eight: The one week before he'd finished with me, and then seven more afterward.

It had been a fine surprise to come home and finally find the wrapped box nestled against the front door. Nudging it out of the way with my toe, I noted the weight of the contents then stepped inside, hoping someone would see it sitting unguarded, think it was something grand, and steal it in the night. That failing, I stashed it in one of the drawers he'd emptied. There it rested for weeks, waiting, ubiquitous, a hidden emblem of all my failings as his chosen partner- a persistent reminder that I had, indeed, been 'un-chosen'.

That drawer front, the dark, bevelled Cherry hummed to me. It was the first thing my bleary eyes focused on in the morning. The two silver knobs were the last things to flash before the light went out at night.

The time had come, and my hand was steady as I wrote out the invitation:

_Ron,_

_If you could spare a few moments this Friday, at 6:30, I'll spring for pain au' chocolat and a coffee at the Café Tortucci, 438 S. Arlington St._

_No pressure. I have something that belongs to you. _

_Hermione_

Confident with my word choice and the overall ice-queen tone, I tied the note to the owl's leg. Of course, no sooner had it flown away, but I was beset by crushing doubt. I shouldn't have used the phrase, "No pressure"- it's just too lame. I never should have offered coffee _and_ the pastry, with its implications of lingering about and chewing near each other. For that matter, I should have just named a street corner for a quick hand-off. There would have been an awkward Hello, a brief explanation, and then a forced, cheery Good-bye.

Yes. That's what I should have done.

This becomes more obvious by the second as I sit alone at the two-top by the window. The carrier bag with the package inside is under the table. The longer I wait, the more I feel myself nudging it with my shoe. I tap it. I prod it. By the time my watch reads 7:13, I'm actively driving my heels into it, rattling the bag and drawing stares. By 7:15, the hot cocoa I ordered is cold, the top covered with pale film, the bottom thick with fine, black grit. Maybe he's having trouble finding the place. I wait ten minutes longer.

If he'd show up, he'd see I pulled my hair back and braided it tight, just like he's always hated, just so he'd know that I'd come with zero expectations. He'd see I picked a Muggle spot, a place the two of us had never been before, well away from any dangerous point of reference. If he'd bother, he'd find a large, well-lit coffee shop with a glass front and mirrors running the length of the walls so he could find plenty to look at if he didn't want to look at me.

I swish the debris around and peer into my cup. His note said he'd come, so I wait ten minutes more.

Outside, it's begun to rain in earnest, and I stand to pull on my coat. I look down as I button-up, studying the blurred, foreshortened shade of myself reflected in the gleaming floor. Past the soles of my shoes, there is only the flare of grey wool, my elbows jutting out on both sides, and the pale, featureless oval of my face. I bend to pick up the crumpled, slouching bag, and, while the un-focused shapes of a mouth and nose rise up to meet me, the places where the eyes should be remain dark and hollow.

I try not to dwell on this as I dump my mug in the dishpan over the waste bin and walk out the door. Beneath the awning, I open my umbrella and think on which way to go. This bag, this package, they're not coming home with me tonight, but Ron's blown me off, Ginny's left the country, and the Burrow and the joke shop are out of the question.

That leaves Harry- if Harry even exists, anymore.

Standing here, static, the water is already bleeding from the hem of my jeans, rising through the denim to cling to my calves. My socks leech the damp down into my shoes. The rain whipping around me lights in tiny droplets on my coat, while the inside of each nostril and the space around my eyes, burns, the vessels and veins contracting with cold as I breathe in. I begin to walk, gulping quick lungfuls of frigid air, cooling everything fast, through and through. I indulge, drowning in the mercy of this chill, wet, darkness.

By the time I get to Harry's, I need to be unbreakable and numb. I want to be frozen hard, inside and out, before I even raise a knuckle to knock on the door.


	2. After: or Prologue, Part 2

**Harry**

A part of her, an ankle or a knee, pops as she passes through the doorway. I open my eyes in time to track the silhouette motion of one calf, the flex of one foot, before she disappears into the hall. Out of sight, she becomes the soft crush of heels and toes sinking into carpet, the whisper of fabric being raised from the floor, the hiss of cloth sliding against skin.

The oven door creaks open. I hear the tinny clang, the puff of displaced air as it seals shut. There is a moment of nothing, then the metal on metal grate of the chain latch, the grind of the guts of the door-knob. Street noises rush in- tires squelching against wet pavement, the frantic bleating of a horn in the next lane over. I grab my glasses and throw back the covers. Before I can sit, she's closed the door, shutting me in with an interminable silence.

I kick my feet free of the sheet and roll off the bed. My shorts are somewhere here in the dark, but the lamp is dead, so I forget it and charge out to the sitting room. The copper light streaming through the gap in the curtains cuts across a heap of denim on the floor. I wrestle the trousers over my knees, the buckle of my belt flogging my thighs. I snatch my T-shirt from under the coffee table and whip it over my head, shivering, engulfed in cold cotton.

She will have made it to the street by now. She will have turned east, heading toward the nearest Apparition point two blocks away. I kick my trainers onto their soles and cram my bare feet between the rise of the heel and the thin, padded tongue. Socks, underwear: Floppy wastes of time. Perceived essentials, that, it turns out, aren't.

Essential now is speed. Necessary to this moment are keen eyes and a loud voice. As I pull on my coat and slam out the door, what is absolutely indispensable, what I am totally without, is a hint of her motive. Barrelling into the foot traffic, scanning the crowd, I find myself slipping into Auror mode, retracing, probing my memory for anything that could be labelled 'evidence', trying to objectively reconstruct the scene. I have the who, what, where, when, and how. Missing is the why. Why would a young woman sneak out of a warm bed to wade through this February mizzle in the middle of the night? The objective answer: Countless reasons- she forgot to lock her doors, she fancied a walk in the rain, or, perhaps, the cat needs feeding. So sod objectivity and ask the real question, patently un-impartial and painful: Why would _she_ want to sneak away from _me_?

The answer, I know, isn't a bludger through a window. It's a dozen tiny pings against the glass, the hundreds of spider web cracks spreading slowly, joining over time, until one wrong nudge sends the whole thing collapsing from the frame.

So I start at the very end, looking for that last careless word or gesture. I search for the Devil in the details.

Those final moments when we were both still awake, still lazing in a haze of dopamine and sweat, what I remember is the weight of her, the firm ridges of her ribs pressing against my open hands. She spoke, answering me, and I turned my head so the tip of my nose and my mouth were on her stomach. I didn't register the exact second her fingertips grew still in my hair, but when I realized she'd stopped moving, I looked up to where her face was listing against the pillow, her lips a lingering flesh red, swollen and parted. I pulled my hands free and pushed myself up over her. Her hand sank down, her fingertips falling to the place my lips had been.

I remember the air, too cool on my chest, and the arc of her legs falling together as I pulled the duvet over her- over us. I lay on my stomach beside her, the tip of one curl coiled around my finger, and I thought if she could fall asleep lying there beneath me, she must have felt as safe, as positively _right_, as I did.

Now, I can only suppose she didn't feel that way, at all.

And I'd like to believe that by lying still and listening as she left, by choosing not to act, I was really just doing what she wanted. I'd like to think my intentions were entirely noble. But a second, sotto voice in my head is churning out phrases like "passive aggressive", and "blatant narcissistic denial", and it makes me sick at myself to have to admit there is truth in the words- that I didn't want to believe she would leave me, so, to punish her, I just lay there and let her go.

The under-voice splutters up something about "latent self-destructive tendencies", and I clench my jaw and quash the thought down. All this sunk-in psycho-babble is irrelevant. What matters now is that I'm pushing past these scattered clusters of pub-goers, that I'm up on my toes, craning my neck, looking daft and desperate to catch a glimpse of her somewhere beyond. She can't have got that far ahead of me, and, while she's fast- the fact still remains- I'm faster.

* * *

**A/N-** If this were a book, the next page would be blank, and then the story begins:)


	3. One Rough Night in September

**Hermione**

When I find him, Harry is curled on my bathroom floor, the top of his head pressed flat against the tub, his glasses floating in a cloudy soup of toilet water and sick. At the sound of my feet against the tile, he drags his head around, opening one clenched eye a slit, and then turns back toward the toilet.

"Everything's under control, here," he says, wrapping his fingers around the porcelain. "Go back to bed…" Pulling himself up, then slumping forward onto the rim, he says, "Just toss my cold carcass out with the rest of the rubbish in the morning." He rolls his face on the edge of the bowl and spits. I snatch his glasses out from the sour muck as his body heaves, just before he can honk all over them, again.

His hand scrabbles against the tank, feeling for the flush, as I stand at the sink pumping hand soap, covering the lenses and wire frames. I scrub as the water runs from cold to tepid, from tepid to hot. Seeing steam, I leave his glasses beneath the boiling stream in the basin and pull a towel from the rack as he sinks to the floor. I double it over and kneel, then push my fingertips around the curve of his head.

"Up," I say. He rises and I slide the towel beneath his ear.

"Thanks," he says, then groans, turning his face into the plush, white cotton. His voice muffled, I can only make out the words, "hate", "die", "puddle", and "Ron's dribble."

I kill the hot water and prop his glasses against the green tumbler I keep the ear buds in. "Ron hardly uses this bathroom," I say, grabbing a face cloth from the stack on the shelf and soaking it with cold water. Stepping around him, I flick the hallway light on and the bathroom light off. His profile re-emerges, wincing in the dimness. "So," I say, kneeling over him, "if you were to die in anyone's dribble, it'd be mine."

I smooth the wet cloth against his forehead. His eyes close as the edge of his lips curl up slow.

"Dirty girl," he mutters.

"Mm. You'll be all right for a minute on your own? I'll be right back." I touch his shoulder and stand. He nods once and curls up tighter on the tile floor.

I hope this doesn't turn out to be a singular phenomenon applicable only to Weasley's, but I've found the best way to alleviate most of the sickness from guzzling a fifth of clear, pine smelling liquor is two thick, spongy slices of white bread with a nice hunk of Cheddar in between. The principle theory is solid: Lower the blood alcohol level by eating. Still, it's just enough to get one through the night, so I go ahead and rummage for the hangover potion while I make tea. Ten cheese sandwiches won't fix the mess he'll be in the morning.

I leave the potion on the end table next to the sofa where he was sleeping and carry the mug and the plate to the bathroom. He rolls over with his eyes closed when the plate clatters against the tile.

"I've brought you some tea. Can you sit?" I steady him with my free hand as he hoists himself up. He stares at the mug and swallows hard. I can see the sweat glaze the skin beneath his eyes. Daunted, he turns back toward the toilet.

I sit in the doorway and push the plate toward him. "Harry, eat this. It will help, I promise."

He stays heaped across the toilet lid for a minute, then sits up and wipes his face, then hands, on the damp cloth. I hold up the plate and he takes the sandwich, bites off a corner, and chews. He doesn't require an audience, so I wedge myself inside the door frame, lean back, and shut my eyes. Across the hall, through the bedroom door, I can hear the sucking sound of Ron's snoring. Apart from that, the flat is silent except for the mush noises Harry makes as he chews. Eyes closed, listening as one rhythm plays over the other, I don't realise I've begun to drift until Harry's voice pulls me back to the bathroom.

"Thanks, Hermione."

"Hm?" I blink and lift my head, dazed.

"And here I was beginning to think," he says, laboriously shifting to lean against the open door, "you didn't care, anymore."

"About…?" I nudge the mug closer to his leg. Grasping the handle, he lifts. Light sketches across the top of the tea as it trembles in his hand. He squints down into the liquid darkness, presumably searching for cream. "It's black," I say. He stares at it a moment longer, then takes an experimental sip.

He swallows then mumbles into the mug. The words slip unheard around the brim, and I shake my head and lean forward. "Pardon?" He pulls the mug from his lips, sloshing a few drops of tea down the side, as his eyes roll up to meet mine.

"All night, I'm waiting." He raises his empty hand, then swipes it through the air. "And nothing. Not a word when I'm swimmin' through that bottle at the pub… head lolling in the toilet- still, you keep to yourself." His voice sounds seared and low, and his face hangs in my direction as he speaks. "I mean, I've been… monumentally stupid tonight, Hermione… beyond intolerable. And you," he leans back, draws his knees up, and points at my chest, "you haven't so much as huffed in my direction. And, honestly, I'm sick of waiting for the dressing-down, so if you if could just go ahead and have done, I think we'll both sleep a whole lot better, tonight."

I blink at him, stung, disarmed. Even through the heavy lids and the slight slur, I can tell he's not playing. He means it. All night, he's just been waiting for the vicious, harping bint to come out and crack her whip.

This is what Harry thinks of me.

"Right," I look down and fiddle with the hem of my pyjama top. "I…I've nothing to say. It's only been a few days. You're allowed a little time…" _To grieve, _I almost add, but stop myself. "And… I suppose it doesn't feel like my place, anymore. You're a grown-up, now, wearing your big boy pants…" I glance at him and he grins, undermining my point, completely.

But then his face changes, droops down. He lets loose a twisted chuckle then closes his eyes. "Yeah. We're all grown up, now, aren't we?"

And I can't pin-point the inherent tragedy of these words, but I feel it stretching between us, an allusion to freshly painted walls, to empty cupboards and a hallway lined with boxes, rattling with the few things he bothers to call his own. This phantom outline of his new life, it's just another forever empty space where something good used to be, and, suddenly, I have to tilt my head back to hold in the tears. He shouldn't be here, anticipating a tongue lashing on my bathroom floor. He should be elsewhere, curled around sweet-smelling hair and freckles, still cocooned in the adolescent faith that everything, with this person beside him, could be all right.

But that's over, and he won't tell why, so I'm lost for the right thing to say. Instead, I look for something to do. I collect the plate and am searching for the face cloth when I see the black smear against the tile. The trail of whatever it is leads to the black tip of Harry's white sock.

"What's happened to your foot?" I reach up and flip on the bathroom light. The black turns to red.

He doesn't open his eyes. "Bashed it on the way. Aches a bit," he says.

"A bit? Take that sock off so I can have a look." I stand and step around him as he tugs at the elastic around his ankle. He slides the sock away and shows me five blood stained toes, the largest split deep down one side of the nail.

"_This," _he says, "is why I shouldn't drink." He bends the bleeder, squinting dispassionately down as the tiny, red chasm of flesh spreads and closes.

"Stop. You'll make it worse." I leap up and burst through the bedroom door, heading straight for the medicine cupboard in the master bath. I grab the Essence of Ditany and then detour to my night stand for my wand. Ron stops snoring and raises his head.

"Wha's happenin'?"

"Nothing. Harry's cracked his toe. I've got it."

Back in the bathroom, I settle a legs length away and draw Harry's foot into my lap.

"Once, when I was little, my dad sliced his finger on the mower blade," I say, waving my wand, clearing away the dried blood. "At the time, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, so I was hovering around, getting in the way. The cut was really deep, and even I could see he needed stitches, so when he sent me to look for the Super Glue, I sort of suspected he was just trying to get rid of me while he sewed himself up." I pick up the little bottle, unscrew the dropper top, and squeeze, measuring. "So I hurried, found the glue, and ran back. Hold still, now." One drop of Ditany sinks into the split. There's a hiss and a wisp of green smoke. "And I was so disappointed. He was just sitting on the side of the tub, waiting with his finger wrapped in a cloth. No needle. No thread. And I must have looked entirely deflated, because he laughed at me, then he let me run the bead of glue over his cut while he held the skin together." Harry's toe is whole again, the new skin pearl pink and glistening. "I wish he could see this."

"So, bust your toe open on the coffee table next time you go round." I snap my head up to find Ron's shoulders, stiff and bull-broad, filling the doorway. He's looking down at me, the set of his face flat and mean as his eyes bore into my lap. I look down to Harry's foot. The top branching with blue veins and the knobby suggestions of bone, the rectangular toes, the pale apricot wash of the sole- it's all cradled in my warm palm as my thumb stretches behind the lump of his ankle and into the fine, dark hair of his leg. A pulse of hot/cold panic rolls through my body, and when I look back, Ron has turned from me and is speaking to Harry. "All right, then, mate?" he says.

Harry looks pinned, as if the sudden swell of tension has forced him flat against the door. "Yeah. Good."

Ron nods, then turns and slouches back to the bedroom. The door thuds softly as it closes behind him.

"Well," I say, guiding Harry's foot to the floor, "I think we've spent enough time in the loo for one evening." I begin to reach all over, manically gathering the detritus of the night. I snatch the towel and face cloth from Harry's side and lean for the mug, but he covers it with his hand.

"'S not even cold, yet." Close to my ear, the texture of his voice, the scratch and stir of air around each sound, seizes me. I take a long breath. The smell of pub- of smoke and wood wax and a hint of stale grease- lingers in my hair and on his shirt. I turn my face to his, near enough now that he can see my weariness clearly. "Ron's angry," he says. "I should go."

"No." I sit back on my heels, clutching the laundry in one hand. "Whatever it is, it's nothing to do with you." I Vanish the cloth and towel to the hamper in the bedroom, then stand. I grasp his wrist and help him from the floor. On two feet, he staggers a bit, and I raise an eyebrow and smirk.

"Ah, there it is." He grins, circling his finger sloppily through the air in front of my face. "That's what I've been waiting for." I pluck his glasses from the sink and hand them over. He fits them over his ears as I move past him to pick up the plate and the mug. "I've got those," he says, taking them from me. "I'm heading that way."

"We could swap," I say. "I'll take the sofa, and you can bunk with Ron."

He snorts and shakes his head. "I'm lonely, but, no. Thanks."

It comes at odd times, now, the overwhelming compulsion to just hold him near. I stopped acting on it years ago. For so long, it's been someone else's place. Tonight, though, I reach out, wrap my fingers over his shoulder and pull him close. His hands are full of dishware, but he sags against me, heavy as the dead, and, for a few seconds, he lets me hold him up.

He takes a deep breath, then sighs it away. He says, "Maybe _this_ is what I was waiting for," then he's through the door, shuffling down the hallway, the plate dangling at his side. I want to follow, to make sure he'll be okay, but Ron's in the bedroom, not snoring. I take a last look at the bathroom. The smear on the floor is gone, wiped away by someone's clothes, but Harry's sock still lies wadded on the tile. I pick it up and clean it with my wand, then stretch it over the doorknob and turn out the light. The bulb in the hallway I leave burning, just in case he needs to find his way.


	4. Toil, Trouble

**Harry**

According to Benoit, lip gloss is the single greatest invention of the twentieth century.

Don't just think of it as that goopy shit staining up your best shirt, he says. Placed in its proper context, it's a device. An ultra-effective tool in the sub-conscious strive for biological self-mimicry.

I mean, really, Benoit says, the tip of his churchill a tiny, orange sun flaring in the shadows, you can hardly ask for a more blatant signal than a pair of sweet-slick lips parted and practically dripping in your direction.

The guys at his table all grunt in a knowing way, the sound of bandits planning their next plunder, while at our table Ron spews his stout, spotting up the front of his robes. He splutters and gasps. He takes a big, croaky breath and asks, "Are you hearing this?" Like I might have suddenly gone deaf. Like every man within earshot isn't locked in on Benoit's voice, memorizing every word he says.

Benoit points to the bar: The girl on the stool at the edge there, that thing she's doing with her shoe, flexing her toes, her foot thrusting in then slipping back out. Think, boys. _Remind_ you of anything?

Benoit nods toward the billiards table: The woman fiddling with the pendant on her necklace, sliding it along the chain so her fingernails graze the soft, white skin of her chest. That's called 'self-touch', and she's sending a message. She's saying 'This feels good. Maybe you can make me feel good, later.' It's a text-book example of the physical manifestation of sub-conscious desires.

Ron says, "Are you listening, Harry? Because _this_ …this is good stuff," He leans back to get closer, his chair creaking as the weight shifts from four legs to two.

I say, "Oh,yeah," and trace my middle finger over the big 'O' of the Ogden's logo on my beermat. I say, "He's brilliant, Benoit," then, just to see if I even register, "Even Hermione thought so when he was trying to chat her up earlier."

And… nothing. Benoit is going on about red lipstick and primate courtship displays, and Ron is sunk in wonder, eyes round and wide, mouth just this side of gaping, chair groaning as he tilts further and further back.

I say, "Yup. She was really impressed."

I say, "And he was quite taken with her."

I say, "You know, I think she might have this mad idea that you're about to chuck her."

Still nothing, so I say, "She practically told me as much, though I didn't get it at the time."

Ron is gawking over his shoulder, a new and avid disciple. I lean my head against the brick behind me and stare across the table.

I say, "Are you listening, Ron? Because _this_…this is good stuff."

xXxXxX

My chair is squeaking.

No. Screeching is the better word. It's screeching- eye squinching, tooth shattering shrill- every time I move to the right. I don't remember this being a problem yesterday, or the day before. I'm fairly sure my arse was only greeted with one quick croak before being served in silence. But now, today of all days, there it is. Obviously, I've never heard the Mandrake's cry, but I imagine this is how it kills. This same sort of sound ripping through the brain, severing all crucial connections until all those automatic functions of the body- breathing and blinking and blood pumping- simply stop.

I stand and grab the chair. I flip it upside down and wrestle it, shrieking, onto my desk. The file I was supposed to be studying scatters, and the cold dregs of an afternoon coffee dash across the photos as my mug spins across the wood then smashes on the floor. The corners of today's _Prophet _catch the stirring air and lift, fanning upward, the paper sliding slowly from the edge of the desk and down, the pages falling away from each other with a quiet flutter of slipping sounds.

Once up-ended and off the ground, my chair is an alien artefact, an unfamiliar form of wood, metal, and pocked rubber wheels. I'm no tinkerer, but, today, I need to take apart this chair. I need to find out exactly where the weak spot is. I must see the broken pieces with my own eyes and fix them with my own hands. And so, minutes later, my desk is strewn with rusted screws and bits of steel, soggy paperwork and flecks of sawdust. I'm so engrossed, I don't even hear her walk up. I don't see her in front of me until her hand sets the re-assembled mug on my desk, and then she is kneeling, collecting the pages of the _Prophet_, shuffling them back into order.

"It doesn't have to be perfect, Hermione," I say to the thick, ropy bun bobbing against her neck. "It's going in the bin, anyway."

She stands and lays the re-folded newspaper on my desk. She pushes her fingers into it, pressing it flat, as if something alive and dangerous might snake its way from between the pages. I don't look up, but work on. She is still, watching.

"Looks like you might be a while," she says. "Mind if I join you? They've begun a maintenance project on the fourth floor." She lifts her hand from the _Prophet_ and flicks one of the wheels branching up from the base in front of her. It whirls upon its caster with a tiny clatter. "Lots of dust and noise."

"Yeah," I say, "sit." She does, and I listen as she rummages, pulling her things from her satchel. There is the hollow scrape of unfurling parchment, then the fluid roll of her quill gliding over its surface. She exhales, settles in.

Dust and noise.

Sitting in a room Hermione has Silenced is the auditory equivalent of floating in deep space. She can repel dirt from every surface within a twenty metre radius.

Dust and noise, indeed. We both know why she's really here.

Even so, we work without speaking. Ignoring the _Prophet_, ignoring Hermione, ignoring the awful urge to slop the whole, shameful mess into her waiting ears, I fix my eyes on the clutter in front of me. I tell myself there's no rush. We'll get to the picture in the middle of page five soon enough. But the silence spins out forever, and my nerves are drum-head tight, and a single tone is humming in my head, and suddenly I'm halfway through blurting out the question before I even know what I want to ask.

"So, the hair. Is that something new, or…" I keep my eyes down, punching at the chair column with the ball of my hand, knocking it loose from the base.

Hermione's quill scratches on. "I suppose so. I hadn't seen it until today," she says, unbothered. "Really brings out the Charlie-ness of her face, I think."

At this, I look up. "What?"

"That sort of pixie cut, it makes her look like Charlie."

"Does not," I say, but she is already picking up the _Prophet_ and shaking it open. She spreads the page in front of me.

"Harry, really…." she says. And, damn it, but she's right. Now, all I see is Charlie. Charlie's cranky brow. Charlie's jaw- clean shaven and buffed smooth, but still Charlie's jaw- above the peep of forged cleavage peeking from a tight, black dress. One strange, hybrid hand clasps a muffin- shaped bag , the other grasps the arm of someone the caption calls 'Marco Giordano, Italy's finest Seeker'. Even the set of her shoulders- she's her brother all over. A mad little laugh gurgles from my throat, and I look up at Hermione, feeling every bit the nutter I've been accused of being.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I shouldn't have…this isn't why…." She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, drops her eyes, and folds the paper back onto itself.

"No. It's fine. I mean, everyone's seen it, and they're all pretending they didn't, and that's worse than just…."

"Rubbing it in your face?"

"Right. It's time you rubbed it in my face. It's done. It's over. And it's well past the point where I need to be tip-toed around and coddled. "

She sags back into her seat and crosses her ankles. She scrapes the corner of her parchment with her thumb. "I just…. I didn't know if you had reason to still hope…"

I go back to my chair, tapping the screws that hold the column base to the seat with my wand, watching as each wiggles free and then nests in its hole. "No," I say. "No hope."

"I'm sorry to hear it," she says. She's watching me again, patient. And then she takes a deep breath. "Harry…."

"Let's just drop it, okay, Hermione?" I don't even look at her. Instead, I fiddle about, dividing similar parts into piles, until she finally gives up, turns away, and goes back to her parchment.

I should be glad. These days, it only takes a few words to shut Hermione out.

I should be glad, but I'm not.

Instead, for the thousandth time, I wish it had ended for any other reason than it did. I would rather explain anything— jealous rages, cheating, a substance problem—anything other than what really happened. Anything other than the truth.

Because there's what's true, and then there's what's honest. What's true is that I can't sleep for dreaming. What's honest is far more complex and involves a list of particulars I'd rather never speak of again: My clinically termed "sleep disturbances", the services of one Dr. Joan Scarlett, and, worst of all, that stupid black notebook where it's all written down.

The truth is "seeking treatment" was Ginny's idea.

And, honestly, I can't blame her.

In fact, I'm surprised she limped along with me as far as she did. It wouldn't take long for anyone to get sick of living around what I'd become. A zombie narcoleptic. A stumbling, grunting cat-napper of a man. "You have to do something about this," she hissed one Sunday morning, slapping me awake after I dozed off- bang in the middle of sex. I think when she made the appointment with the Healer she was convinced the right potion, the easy cure, was just round the corner. It was for Ginny that I went and I sat, half asleep and half naked, on the examining table. The Healer traced the veins of my arms with his wand. He pulled my lower eyelids down and pressed hard against my cheekbones. He pushed his thumbs into the hollows beneath my jaws and tilted my head to the left, and then to the right. He scowled, the corners of his mouth sinking deep into the folds of his jowls, and then he picked up a pad of paper and a short, raven quill. He leaned in close and spoke quietly. "There's nothing wrong with you, Mr. Potter, the talking cure won't fix." He scribbled on the pad, pulled the top page away and passed it to me. "I want you to see this lady. Muggle, but her husband was killed in our first war, so she knows all about our, er, recent history. However, I believe her to be ambivalent to your particular status and I know her to be very discreet, and I don't think I'm wrong in supposing that _discretion_, Mr. Potter, is certainly preferable in this matter."

So I met the discreet Joan Scarlett, and she sat with her pad on her knee, holding her ready pen in a spear grip beside her face. She smiled her satin rose smile and said, "All right, Harry, why don't you tell me a bit about yourself."

But I had nothing to tell. By then I was nothing but the reason I came, so I said, "I have trouble sleeping."

She nodded once, slowly, and said, "Okay, then. Let's talk about what keeps you awake at night?"

There is what's true, and there is what's honest, and truthfully, I wasn't exactly honest with Dr. Joan Scarlett. Maybe because she's the same age my mum would have been had she lived, but I found myself playing it close. I evaded. I diffused. And I thought I was so clever until the end of the hour when she reached over to her desk and picked up a black leather book. She walked me to the office door and then slapped the book into my chest. She told me to fill it up, to write down everything I dreamt, to specially detail the moments that led up to waking. The worst of the worst, so to speak. "And, Harry," she peered over her tortoise rimmed readers, "omit nothing. We have work to do. No editing."

It's harder than one would think, writing it all out in any way that makes sense, but I try. In my black book, I write about blood and sand and the tiny heart that heaves in my hands. I write about glass spiked air, breathing it down, the prickle in my throat, coughing up black. I write about Teddy, his loose limbs cartwheeling through layers of sky and fog, falling to a place that I can't see. I scrawl letters into words into phrases. Grey lips, loose jaws, the silver flick of a short blade, powdered milk eyes sunk in char, my feet unmoveable, dark liquid ribbons lifting, spreading from bodies mired beneath the water.

In my black book, I drop a robin's egg on Ginny's red tongue then sew her lips shut with coarse, blue thread. I force my fingers into Ron's mouth and pluck out his teeth, one, then another, then another.

I run with Hermione. Through caverns, and narrow, shadowed passages, and hallways, and up and down staircase after staircase, and through close grown thickets, and across wide fields, night after night, we run. I can never see her face, but I know it is Hermione. I recognize the sound of air rushing in and out of her lungs. I know too well the feel of her feet pounding the earth beside me.

And, per doctor's orders, I omit nothing. All the ugly things I do to ugly people, all the words so terrible I cringe to see them strung together in my handwriting: It's all there. I take to using my own shorthand- Dlhv, Grybck, B. Lstrng—because I can't stand pairing the names with the verbs- crvd, smshd, slcd, fckd. These things I do with no wand or magic words. No distance from the dark. Just my hands and my body. The feeling of skin tearing at skin.

Honestly, what happened next, I'm still not sure. For weeks I had been beyond careful. Perhaps I was just too out of it after not sleeping the night before to remember to hide the thing away. Perhaps I left it laying in the open that morning accidentally-on-purpose. But, that evening, when I stood in the hallway, staring into our bedroom where Ginny sat, the closed book in her shaking hands, there was a brief flash of something like release. For one moment, I knew she knew everything, and yet, still, there she was. But then she raised her head and, far too fast, her mirror bright eyes raked me over. "This," she said, her voice crumbling, "This is what's inside you."

And because she wasn't as much asking as telling me it was so, I said, "Yeah, I guess it is."

The truth is heroes will inevitably fail. Golden souls tarnish.

_This is what's inside you._

The chair is dismantled, every part whole and lying in plain sight. All that bad noise, unfixable.

I toss my wand onto the desk and run a hand through my hair. Hermione stops writing. Somewhere, miles off in the cubicle maze, a clock is ticking. Hermione shifts in her seat. Her breath catches as she inhales.

"Harry, I…I need to ask…." She begins, but is cut off as the office door bangs open and a surge of male prattle floods around us. Even when their briefings aren't so gruesome, the night shift are a loud lot. Tonight, though, they're absolutely buzzing— high tension wires live with an overload of auxiliary power. Above it all, a distinct Louisiana drawl barrels between the walls.

"… don't care how long the old hack's been around." The voice stops on the other side of my cubicle and drops to an undertone. "One word of this gets printed, Blevins, and he'll kill the girl and run. You make sure her editor—no—you make sure the _publisher _understands that." There's the sound of a hand slapping a shoulder, one set of footsteps strides away, and then Nathan Benoit steps across my threshold. "Potter," he says, "you're still here?" I watch him glance at Hermione. He catches her eye, grins. "I see you've, uh, been brushing up on our case, there." He nods at my desk.

The pictures, the reports. Everything damp and brown and crumpled. The pinnacle of professionalism, I am. Luckily, he's past caring. The female in the room proves too distracting, and I can see I'll never be rid of him until introductions are made.

"Hermione, this is Nathan Benoit, South-eastern Bureau Chief of the U.S.A.A.. Benoit, this is Hermione Granger. She works in the BBS division. You may have seen each other around."

Hermione grasps her things, stands, turns, and then extends her free hand. She fumbles her quill and the parchment she holds coils up on itself, shooting forward. She lunges in reflex, but in one swift movement Benoit is already across the cubicle, the parchment in his fingers, his body square with hers, his lips almost brushing the tip of her nose.

"I don't believe I've had the pleasure," he says, smouldering all over her, before he finally steps back and takes her hand.

Slick git.

If I were Ron, I'd hex his bollocks into a permanent twist. Or, rather, if I were Ron, I'd try. Not to be rude, but men like Benoit use men like Ron to pick the grist of still other, better men from their sparkling, white, alligator teeth.

Already, the two of them are chatting about house-elves. This is how fast Benoit works. How efficient. This is why he's been here three weeks and already he's the Swordsman of the Secretarial Pool—a.k.a. the Right Man for the Job, the Bloke with Three Legs, the Louisiana Plough Horse. Benoit had never seen a house elf until he came here. He's curious about their behaviour, curious about the magic that binds them to a family. He's heard she's an expert, maybe she could explain. Benoit holds her parchment between them. His robes slip over his bare forearms, thick cables of long muscle under oak-coloured skin.

By now, under Benoit's stare, any other female in the Ministry would be a slick, warm puddle of quivering goo. Hermione, though, is as polite and indifferent as if he were any crusty, old dodger off the street. She gives him the name of a book, its author, and the shelf where it can be found in the Ministry's library. She peers down between them and plucks the parchment from his hand.

"Thank you ever so much," she says. She turns to me and pushes a strand of loose hair from her face. She looks at her watch. "I suppose I'll leave you to discuss your case, then."

"Actually, I was just about to clean up," I say, quickly grabbing up my wand and siphoning the coffee from the photos before circling it over the shrapnel on my desk. "_Refecio_."

Everything I pulled apart, it all comes back together. Metal and wood, every part in its place, as perfect a chair as it can possibly be. I haul it down from my desktop and turn it right side up. Gently. So I don't have to hear whether I've failed or not.

Benoit takes the hint. He points his finger at me and then jerks it back, the imaginary recoil of an imaginary gun. He makes a clicking sound with his tongue and teeth, then says, "Tomorrow, Potter," all the time ogling Hermione as she sits packing away her things. He moves a couple of steps back, then bends at the waist until his face is level with hers. When she lifts her eyes, he smiles. "It was very nice to meet _you_, Miss Granger," he says, then backs himself out of my cubicle and disappears down the hall.

I cram the case file back into its folder. She stands and grasps the handle of her satchel, her body tilting with the weight. "Are you coming, Harry?" she says.

"Yeah. Just a second." I toss the _Prophet_ in the bin, then grab my cloak off the filing cabinet. I trail along behind her through the hallway and out the office door. The smell of fall, of green apples and black tea and ink, swishes from the folds of her robes.

Waiting for the lift, I nudge her with my elbow. "You joining us tonight? Ron didn't say."

Hermione turns. Her brows drift together. "What?"

"Ron and I at The Leaky- are you coming along?"

"Ron?" She says.

"Yeah. You know Ron. Ginger hair, hogs all the biscuits."

"You're meeting Ron at the pub? Here? In London? Tonight?"

The tremble of her voice. With every syllable, my stomach twists a little tighter. "Yeah. He…he didn't mention it?"

She looks away from me. "He's been at the shop in Hogsmeade since Sunday."

Today is Thursday. I try to think of one good reason why he hasn't spoken to her in four days.

"Well, Halloween _is_ next week…" I say, and as soon as the words are cast out, I wish I could reel them back in. Instead, they are immediately lapped over and sunk, submerged inside her to bloat and rot away.

The door in front of us opens and she automatically steps forward. I follow her inside and watch as she presses her thumb into the button labelled with the capital 'A'. She leans against the wall. She grips the handrail and the door slides shut.

"Ron's a good friend," she says.

"Yeah. The best." Best friend. Crap fiancée.

"He worries. He likes to lure you away from your 'sad little teacup', as he calls it."

"It's not so bad, my place."

"No," she says, so soft I barely hear. "It's not so bad."

She reaches forward and brushes her fingertips down the row of numbered buttons. "What's the hardest part, Harry? At night, when you go home to that empty flat, what's the worst part of living alone?"

I laugh, a strange, bitter bark that bounces off the walls. "Speaking of rubbing it in…" I say. But then I look back at her face, at the way it's all pinched around her thoughts. She bothers to ask. Why is it so hard to just answer her bleeding questions?

"I guess…I guess when I wake up in the night… and the bed is freezing all around. The fact of there being only one warm spot. I'm still not quite used to that, yet. "

The lift shudders to a stop. The ding of the bell tells us we've reached our destination.

"Sounds stupid, doesn't it?"

"No," she says. "Not at all."

The door opens onto the Atrium. I wait for her to move, but she stays still, her satchel hanging by two fingers at her side.

"After you," I say. She glances at me and rouses herself forward. Instead of the lifts out to the street, she moves toward the row of fireplaces and I follow, thinking that if I can just persuade her to come with me, if I can just get the two of them together, everything will be all right.

"Hermione…" I begin.

"Have a lovely evening, Harry," she says over her shoulder. "Tell Ron not to get too pissed, will you? If he gets himself splinched, there's no one waiting in Hogsmeade to help fix him up." And then the flames flow around her, and she is gone.

xXxXxXx

When I fling it, the wringing beermat is just heavy enough to maintain a decent momentum. It thwacks him in the ear, and Ron startles and goes down, chair clunking back hard, legs sweeping inelegantly through the air. A few quick titters drift from the shadows. The bar-maid dropping drinks a few tables down rushes over to help peel him from the floor.

"What'd you do that for?" Ron says, rubbing his new-raised welt and righting his chair. "I know you've had a crap day, but bloody…"

"What do you care what he's on about?" I jerk my head at Benoit. "It's not as if you're on the pull."

His face goes flat. He takes a big gulp from his tankard and says, "Yeah. Well. You never know."

And there it is again. That twist in my gut.

Benoit, in his apparent quest to destroy the magic and beauty of all good things, says, really, breasts are nothing more than modified sweat glands.

And, honestly, I think I'm beginning to hate Benoit.

* * *

**Reviews are love, folks. Love me ;) **


End file.
